Customer Factors Affecting Research, Initial Trust In The B2c Website

Trust is the key to the success of electronic commerce. In the meantime, trust has become a field favored by many researches. However, the vast majority of studies into trust consider it as an experience-based attribute of relationship. For inexperienced consumers, it is a great risk to shop on the Internet and mature trust fails to help him make the preliminary decision of shopping. In this study, initial trust is referred to as trust in an unfamiliar web vendor, with whom the consumer has no prior experience. Therefore, it is the first and decisive step for owners of B2C web sites to obtain initial customer trust on a website.This thesis is based on the previous researches on the trust of customers in websites in the context of B2C electronic commerce. It summarizes the factors of customer trust in B2C websites in three aspects: B2C websites, individual customers and web environment. The factor of B2C websites is the focus of the thesis and comprises four areas: website image (including two dimensions: website reputation and website size), website navigation functionality (including four dimensions: website context, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and website connection), website interaction (including three dimensions: communication, community and customization) and website security (including two dimensions: transaction security and personal information security), individual trust propensity and perceived web environment are included in individual and environment factors. In all, 13 independent variables affect the initial trust. Then, the thesis focuses on three kinds of relationships, i.e. the impact of the foregoing factors on initial trust, the impact of these factors on customer behavior intentions, and the impact of initial trust on customer behavior intentions. Finally, the thesis provides some suggestions for B2C website managers. In this study, the questionnaire survey is adopted and 238 effective samples have been collected. The research hypotheses are to a great extent supported and confirmed by the results of the statistical analysis. The results of this empirical research indicate that the most important factors of positively affecting initial trust: personal information security, community, individual trust propensity, website reputation, perceived ease of use and website connection.